Michael Hancock and Chris Romer: Send these candidates to the showers!

My official ballot for the City and County of Denver's municipal run-off election was shoved through my mail chute yesterday and I picked it up gingerly, wondering if the slime would come off on my hand. Increasingly, this campaign has made me long for a John Hickenlooper-like no-negative-campaigning shower.

We've listened to Chris Romer lambasting Michael Hancock for a pay raise that would benefit Denver City Councilmembers -- including Hancock.

We've listened to a Romer supporter (staff or not) tying Hancock to (horrors!) Tom Tancredo (more on that tomorrow).

But at least after last night's debate, about the billionth in this Bataan Death March of a series, we finally have concrete proof that Romer ruffles feathers: He endorses chickens in Denver back yards, but no roosters.

Patricia Calhoun co-founded Westword in 1977; she’s been the editor ever since. She’s a regular on the weekly CPT12 roundtable Colorado Inside Out, played a real journalist in John Sayles’s Silver City, once interviewed President Bill Clinton while wearing flip-flops, and has been honored with numerous national awards for her columns and feature-writing.